I read December’s article by the Solicitors Regulation Authority chair Charles Plant . I would like to respond to him through the same channel.

Mr Plant, your suggestion to remove insurance for claims by financial institutions is radical. Your stated rationale is completely novel and distinguishes between those clients that you deem need professional indemnity cover and those ‘who are sufficiently informed to act in their own interests’ who apparently do not.

If that is the true rationale, why are you just choosing financial institutions? All of the companies in the FTSE 100 are sophisticated. If your stated rationale is true, why not exclude them and many other sophisticates besides?

You say that we would be free to acquire cover for claims by institutions as it will no longer be mandatory. Will those increasingly powerful financial institutions not make it mandatory for those firms to acquire cover, thereby defeating your stated rationale?

In fact, just as the referral fee debacle disastrously put more power in the hands of estate agents, by doing this you will put even more power in the hands of financial institutions, much to the detriment of the general public, who will be further deprived of independent advice. Of course, it is those very financial institutions who caused the financial crash through their reckless pursuit of profit.

Your real (unstated) reason appears to be to shunt conveyancing (which has higher negligence claims) into a silo, thereby hastening the demise of many small high street practices.

Timothy Foster, Foster Harrington, Camberley